Recent Articles | About Authors | About the Syndicate | Archives

To receive a plain text copy of this article by email, see info at the bottom of this page.

Real Answers™
jj100
Copyright: © ©2006 James J. Jackson
675 words

THE TELL-TALE HEART IN THE NEW MILENNIUM

By: James J. Jackson

When I was a child, I was intrigued and chilled by Edgar Allan Poe’s shocking tale, “The Tell-tale Heart”.  The story is told by a narrator who goes to great lengths to assure the reader that he is not crazy.   

He takes his time in relating how much he loved his dear, old friend, but that the friend had a pale, blue eye, “Like that of a vulture,” that  haunted the narrator.  Each night, he would go in and shine a light on the eye, only to be repelled in revulsion.  On the eight night of this ritual, he smothered the old man and placed his body beneath the floor boards.

The police arrived in response to neighbors’ reports of screams coming from the house, but the narrator calmly convinced the police that nothing had happened there. But, as he conversed with the police, he began hearing the old man’s heart beating, first softly, then louder, louder, louder.   He couldn’t understand why the police couldn’t hear the beating.  When he could take no more, he screamed his confession.  He had killed the man.  Could O.J. Simpson be in the throes of a Tell-tale Heart syndrome?

Just as the public at large was beginning to accept the saga of former football star, O.J. Simpson’s dramatic trial and acquittal of the murders of his former wife and her friend, Ron Goldman, as just another unsolvable crime, O.J. himself has brought it back to the fore.

He has written a book which supposedly tells how, if he had committed the grizzly crime, he would have done it!  He has begun offering interviews to anyone who is interested in how he would have murdered two people—if, of course, he had done so. One former detective on the original case explains that O.J.’s description of how he would have committed the crime closely  parallels the way the crime was really perpetrated. 

John 3:20 tells us, “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed“. But we were also created with a conscience, which knows and reminds us of every thought, word and deed that we perform.  I believe that particularly hideous acts reside in the forefront of our conscience and may torment us constantly.

People quite often speak of a ’perfect crime’. First of all, this is an oxymoron, since crime cannot be perfect.  There are sometimes crimes, even murder, that go undetected or unsolved for many years, but, who knows the torment the perpetrator suffers.  They may not hear the victim’s heart pounding in their ears, but many researchers believe that the heartbeat that tortured the narrator was his own heart, which could not contain the evil deed he had done.

O.J. still insists that he is innocent of the murders.  He has, by all human standards, “beat the rap.”  He was found responsible for the deaths in a civil trial and owes the victims’ families 33 million dollars, a payment he avoided by claiming poverty.  But, he cannot be tried again for the murders because of double jeopardy laws.  He lives a carefree life of golf, travel and fun.  So, why would he bring the whole sordid mess up again, especially in a manner in which he seems to be pointy his own guilty finger at himself?

We may never know, but God knows, and He says, “Your sin will find you out”.

"Real Answers™" furnished courtesy of The Amy Foundation Internet Syndicate. To contact the author or The Amy Foundation, write or E-mail to: P. O. Box 16091, Lansing, MI 48901-6091; amyfoundtn@aol.com

Request this article:
To instantly receive a plain text copy of this article by email, enter your publication title, city and state, and email address, then retype the article number (shown in bold below). Then click the "Send It" button once.
Fields marked (*) are required

back to top